


Friendly Fire (A Little Wasted On Desire)

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, angst with a small serving of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:56:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6137314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows he doesn't count the scars, or the costs, but Rukia sees what the Soul Society (what she) has cost him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendly Fire (A Little Wasted On Desire)

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from a Silversun Pickups tune, because they are my IchiRuki soundtrack.

Ichigo’s skin is a map of all the battles he’s fought. The battles he’s won, and those that he’s lost. Rukia wishes sometimes that he was still unmarked, still innocent of all the agony that he’s suffered. She knows he doesn’t count the scars or the costs, but she remembers, every time she tugs the ties of his  _ shihakusho _ open exactly what the Soul Society (what she) has cost him.

Rukia has her own scars, a pair of them nestled between her breasts, and many more besides, but Ichigo - Ichigo has too many. They criss-cross his whole body, telling the stories of his life in their smooth and jagged lines. Almost all of them are because he was trying (is still trying) to save his family, save his friends, save the entire godforsaken universe and most often, to save her.

She looks down at him. He’s asleep in her bed (not their bed, she’s been very careful not to call it that, because as much as he spends most of his time here with her in the  _ Sereitei _ , he is still  _ alive _ and she mustn’t forget it), sheets tangled around his legs and bright hair nestled against her pillows. She’ll never get used to seeing him like this, she thinks, the way he sinks so completely into slumber, the way he goes boneless and languid and doesn’t stop himself from curling into her warmth. She runs a hand through his hair, and he hums against her hip.

The line of his body is warm against her legs, and she watches in fascination as goosebumps rise when she ghosts the fingers of one hand down the length of his spine. She draws her hand back up the side of his body, stopping to trace the line of a scar that curls up from the middle of his back and disappears over his shoulder.

Some of his scars are from battles she doesn’t remember (ones she wasn’t part of, or ones she fought in but not beside him), but this one - this one she remembers.

She remembers his choked off gasp and the spray of his blood. She remembers it was raining. She remembers the way her heart had pounded in her chest when he’d collapsed onto the pavement, remembers the way he’d thrown himself into an impossible fight all because of something she’d done. She remembers the way he’d said her name (it had haunted her dreams for weeks after, and on bad nights, it still does), and the way he’d reached for her as she stepped through the  _ senkaimon _ with Renji and her brother.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, smoothing her palm across his shoulders. Ichigo stirs, lifting one arm and slinging it around her hips.

“You think too loud,” he grouses, voice rough with sleep. “Lie down with me.” He pulls her closer to him, face buried in the side of her thigh and Rukia can’t help the smile that tugs at her lips. She doesn’t let him pull her down next to him.

“Do you blame me?” Rukia asks, and Ichigo lifts his head. 

“Blame you for what?” He props himself up on one arm, exposing his chest to her view. Her eyes linger on the scar in the middle of his chest and he follows her gaze. “Rukia,” he says, in that tone that she knows means as far as he’s concerned they’ve hashed this out enough already. He looks up, and catches her eyes with his, and whatever he sees there makes him close his eyes and duck his head. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to her hipbone before he pushes himself up to sit, cross-legged in front of her.

“If you’d never met me –”

“I’d be dead.”

“But —”

“So would my sisters. So would Orihime and Chad and Uryuu.” He takes her hands in his, and this time when he lifts his head, his eyes are burning with the same intensity she remembers from that first night on the street in front of his house. She remembers the give of his flesh against her sword, remembers the sudden rush of her power leaving her and flowing into him.

“Not to mention,” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting into a grin, “I think I actually gave this one to myself.” Rukia starts to protest but Ichigo presses a finger to her lips to shush her. “If you remember, I’m pretty sure I had to actually pull your sword into my own chest, you weren’t doing much at all, lying there on the ground, half-dead.” His gaze cuts to the jagged scar on her shoulder where the Hollow’s teeth had sunk in deeply enough to carve her bones. She watches his brow furrow and his face darken for a second before it smooths out.

“Do you blame me for yours?” Ichigo asks then, flattening his palm over the scar tissue between her breasts.

“No!” Her response is immediate, “how could I? You didn’t give them to me.”  _ I gave you yours _ is what Rukia doesn’t say, and she knows from the way Ichigo’s eyes darken that he heard it anyway. He takes his hand away from her skin and Rukia feels chilled at the loss of his warmth.

“I could never blame you Rukia – for any of them,” Ichigo says, and his eyes gleam in the muted light of her bedroom. “After all, they gave me you.”

They sit, in silence, while Ichigo’s declaration lingers in the air around them. For all that they’ve been saving each other for as long as they’ve known each other, and even now, when they wake up next to each other more mornings than not, neither of them have ever voiced what it is that is between them. They’ve never needed the words, actions speak louder after all.

“Ichigo, I –”

He silences her with a kiss. His mouth is insistent over hers. She yields to the pressure of his mouth, to the way his hands come up and cup her face like she’s precious and it makes something inside of her let go. She lets him bear her down to the bed, lets him keep kissing her until they’re both breathless. When he finally pulls away, his eyes are dark with want and his mouth curves into the smile he saves for her.

“Rukia,” he murmurs, skimming one hand down the length of her body. She’s not shy in front of him, has never been (couldn’t be really - what with sharing a room for months on end and sleeping in his closet), but the way he touches her - hesitant and gentle and like he’s afraid he might break her - it always makes her flush with she’s not sure what, but it’s not shame.

He leans down to kiss her again, and Rukia surges up to meet him halfway. She uses the element of surprise to roll him over, and he goes willingly. He’s flat on his back beneath her, looking up at her, and he  _ trusts _ her. Rukia is overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Ichigo says, bringing one of his hands up to rest on her hip. Concern (for her, always for her) bleeds out of him. She can feel the tangle of their emotions in the air between them. She takes a shuddering breath, trying to grasp enough control of her emotions to reel them in because while Ichigo is not adept at sensing  _ reiatsu _ , he is adept at sensing her. “Rukia,” he says, “it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“I’m fine,” Rukia manages, and Ichigo lifts one eyebrow in disbelief. “Really,” she says, and swoops down to kiss him. He dodges her mouth.

“C’mon Rukia, don’t shut me out. I’m not an idiot.”

“You do a remarkably good impression of one,” Rukia snarks back, more out of habit than actual ill-intent. Ichigo’s eyes widen briefly.

“Hey!” he says, swatting her lightly with the hand he’s using to hold her hips in place. “Look,” he says, “just –” he sighs, “just talk to me, okay?”

Rukia slides off him, and off the bed, picking up his discarded  _ kosode _ as she does. She settles it around her shoulders, and slides the door of her quarters open to the courtyard. The sky is moonlit and cloudless, the stars winking in and out. Behind her, she can hear Ichigo getting out of bed, and the rustle of fabric as he pulls his  _ hakama _ on and his footsteps across the room. He doesn’t talk, just slides an arm around her waist from behind and leans down to rest his chin on her shoulder. She relaxes into his warmth, relaxes into the solidity of his embrace.

She lets the silence hang between them, and Ichigo doesn’t disturb it either. They breathe together, and the wind ruffles the ends of his robes and teases the ends of her hair. She wonders if he knows that the moonlight makes his skin glow, as if she was seeing him as  _ shinigami _ with human eyes. She wonders if he understands what it was that she did that night in front of his house, wonders if he knew that he carried a piece of her soul within him, just like she carries one of his now.

“How can you choose me so easily?” Rukia asks quietly, after the silence has stretched long enough. She feels Ichigo’s intake of breath, and keeps talking before he can answer. “You stay here with me, while your body sleeps at your father’s house - every day you stay here, the less likely it will be that you can return to your life as it was, and yet, you stay.”

“Of course I would choose you,” Ichigo says, voice mild. Rukia finds floorboards beneath her barefeet intensely interesting. “You were always going to be my choice,” he says softly but firmly, and Rukia turns to look up into his face. He’s looking down at her, and suddenly she doesn’t trust herself to speak.

“You gave me a piece of yourself that night,” Ichigo says quietly. Rukia nods into his chest, hearing the steady beat of his heart under her ear. “The first time I saw your  _ shikai _ I remembered her -  _ Sode no Shirayuki _ .” Ichigo gestures towards where their  _ zanpakuto _ rest, side by side against the wall. “The Hollow calls her Queen,” Ichigo laments, and Rukia is startled into laughter by this admission.

Ichigo does not, as a rule, talk about his Hollow. Rukia knows this, and because she knows this, she knows what he has just done with that remark. She buries her face into his chest, and his arms come up around her. He knows, and he understands. She forgets sometimes that beneath the bluster and the rage and the violence, there is a boy - no, a man - who fought across the entire city for her, who nearly lost himself to the darkness in his heart, and who still thinks he might, at any time, be consumed.

She looks up. His face is open, and his eyes are clear and warm. His body is solid, his arms steadfast around her. He leans down, and she lifts herself onto her toes, and when they come together this time, it is with teeth and tongues and hands that clutch and grab. One of his hands comes up to fist into her hair, and Rukia arches into Ichigo’s body. He groans into her mouth when her hands slide down his back and under the waistband of his  _ hakama _ .  

Ichigo pulls away, and Rukia has a moment to revel in how he looks - glassy-eyed, colour riding high on his cheeks - before he sweeps her into his arms and carries her back to bed. By the time he gets her there, he’s shed the hastily tied on  _ hakama  _ and tugged his robe unceremoniously off her, so they’re bare in each other’s arms. He slides home like he never left, and Rukia arches beneath him, bringing the heel of one foot into the small of his back as he thrusts, long and slow.

He pants her name into the join of her neck, over and over and over. She clutches at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. They move together, practiced at this now, and when he slips a hand between them to help her along, Rukia feels the burn of tears in the back of her eyes as she keens his name and her whole body tenses and releases in a flood of pleasure. He follows her over the edge, and they lie together afterwards, breathing hard.

“You know I love you right?” Ichigo says, as he rolls off her, and then tucks her into his side, one arm slung over her narrow hips. Rukia starts, and turns her head to look at him. “Well, I mean -” Ichigo flushes to the roots of his hair, Rukia can feel the heat of it close as she is to him.

“Of course I know,” she says, to save him the embarrassment of backpedaling now. She can hear his grin, and he leans in to kiss her, soft and sweet, and Rukia thinks, maybe now it’s time to stop holding on to where they came from, and start looking towards where they’re going. 


End file.
